Digital tradition : arrangement and labor in Istanbul’s recording studio culture

In one of the first ethnographies of contemporary studio music production, author Eliot Bates investigates the emergence of a transnational market for Anatolian minority popular musics in the Turkish music industry. With its unique interdisciplinary approach, Digital Traditions sets a new standard for the study of recorded music. Abstract: In one of the first ethnographies of contemporary studio music production, author Eliot Bates investigates the emergence of a transnational market for Anatolian minority popular musics in the Turkish music industry. With its unique interdisciplinary approach, Digital Traditions sets a new standard for the study of recorded music Content: Cover Digital Tradition: Arrangement and Labor in Istanbul's Recording Studio Culture Copyright Contents List of Illustrations Preface and Acknowledgments Notes About Language About the Companion Website Part 1: A Digital Tradition of Arrangement Chapter 1: ARRANGEMENT AND ENGINEERING Arrangement and Arrangers Engineering and Engineers Social, Technical, Musical things Research Methodology Chapter 2: TRADITION Discourses of Tradition and Place Problems of Place and Identity Traditions of Work Part 2: Arranged Histories and Arrangement Industries Chapter 3: ARRANGED FOLKLORE IN EARLY REPUBLICAN TURKEY The Demand for Folklore A Source-Resource Model for Analyzing Derleme Folklore at the Birth of the Republic Folklore Institutions During the One-party Era Folklore And Mass Media in the Multi-Party Era Musical Practices of Arrangement, Cleaning, and Restoration Cultural Geographies of Village, Town, City, and Nation Postscript: Revisiting Altun Karahan Chapter 4: THE ANATOLIAN "ETHNIC" MUSIC INDUSTRY The Growth of Turkey's Recorded Music Industry Industries and Ortak -s Ethnic Language Politics and Emerging Markets University Ensembles: Grup Yorum, Kardeş Türküler, and Zuğaşi Berepe Organizational and Production Networks: The Role and Legacy of Kalan Müzik Yapım Concerns With Foreign Perceptions Social Networks and The Nature of Professions Negotiating Outside Actors Part 3: The Recording Studio Assemblage in Istanbul Chapter 5: THE EXPERIENCE OF STUDIO WORK Auditory Images and "Visions" of the Song Arrangement Studio Listening Modalities and Technologies of Audition Latencies Built Environments and Social Dynamics Chapter 6: DIGITAL Hearing Digital data, Visualizing Anatolian Soundings: Synesthesia in the Studio Digital Audio, Music, and Nonmusical Sound Acoustic Instruments and Indirect Computer Users Chapter 7: AESTHETIC KEYWORDS OF THE STUDIO Denge/Denk/Denk Gelmek: Balance and Suitability Fena Değİl and Oldu Galİba: The Aesthetics of "Not Bad" When Mixes Happen Tavır, Yorum, and The Art of Interpretation Renk Enstrümanları Parlak and Büyük Ses Aesthetic Relations Part 4: Case Studies in Arranged Music Chapter 8: ARRANGED MUSIC AND THE DÖNEM FİLMİ GENRE Analyzing Film Music and Sound The Dönem Filmi Genre Vizontele (2001) and the Formation of a New Film music Genre Beynelmilel (2006) and the Problems of Leitmotif Ozlem Taner's "Kara Tren/Seher Inende" (Black Train/Dawn Falls) Dönem Films as Technological Tragic Comedies Chapter 9: ARRANGING THE BLACK SEA Finding the Karadenİz Gökhan Bİrben, "Hele Mele" (on the Outside) Gökhan Bİrben, "Denİzde Dalga Bİrdur" (There's a Wave in the Ocean) Bİzİm Yaşar Kabaosmanoğlu, "Nennİ Nennİ" Fatİh Yaşar, "Sİrlarumİ Söyledum" (I Told my Secrets to the Smoke on the Mountain) Istanbul is home to a multimillion dollar transnational music industry, which every year produces thousands of digital music recordings, including widely distributed film and television show soundtracks. Today, this centralized industry is responding to a growing global demand for Turkish, Kurdish, and other Anatolian ethnic language productions, and every year, many of its top-selling records incorporate elaborately orchestrated arrangements of rural folksongs. What accounts for the continuing demand for traditional music in local and diasporic markets? How is tradition produced in twenty-first century digital recording studios, and is there a "digital aesthetics" to contemporary recordings of traditional music? In Digital Traditions: Arrangement and Labor in Istanbul's Recording Studio Culture, author Eliot Bates answers these questions and more with a case study into the contemporary practices of recording traditional music in Istanbul. Bates provides an ethnography of Turkish recording studios, of arrangers and engineers, studio musicianship and digital audio workstation kinesthetics. Digital Traditions investigates the moments when tradition is arranged, and how arrangement is simultaneously a set of technological capabilities, limitations and choices: a form of musical practice that desocializes the ensemble and generates an extended network of social relations, resulting in aesthetic art objects that come to be associated with a range of affective and symbolic meanings. Rich with visual analysis and drawing on Science & Technology Studies theories and methods, Digital Traditions sets a new standard for the study of recorded music. Scholars and general readers of ethnomusicology, Middle Eastern studies, folklore and science and technology studies are sure to find Digital Traditions an essential addition to their library.